Yuyu Anthology Poem Excerpt and "The Letter from London" by Maria Heath

Maria Heath

Parnassus to New York,

( A Poem for Yuyu at Poetry Parnassus, London Olympics, 2012)

Here is a fragment from the poem to appear in Eternal Snow along with “Letter from London” she sent to Yuyu after finishing her long poem. The editorial team worked on about two dozen drafts of the Letter and finally with Yuyu’s suggestion agreed to publish her first draft in First Person to give our readers a feel of Maria’s passionate commitment to the Muse…( Eds.)

Part IV

The next afternoon,

a jacket of daffodil yellow,

as before a tie, water-marked silk on pressed

cotton white. I think I shuffled some of my poems over

the wood between us for I recall - next -

me quiet as a chrysalis, arms folded across chest,

hands clasped,

head bowed, waiting...perhaps

biting a lip...You then, a mirror to thought,

the missing wing.

After a while, consuming cake -

that seemed not to be cake, but a froth-light substance for winged

creatures of a kind, though actually it was lemon cake and no miracle manna -

it was you who made it unearthly, my shaman calling a genie out

of the waves, I had after all shared cake before at that same place

(the cafe by the book stands under the bridge) with other friends,

but never had it been so mysterious -

at some stage we smiled, then laughed... and I felt at that point

a tremor like a fine fissure in a fortress wall, a tear

in a pupa membrane...

A Letter from London

By Maria Heath

Drury Lane,

London

17th March 2014

 Dear Yuyu,

Good to hear that the readings around New York are going well and your recent collections of poems are well received.

Over the winter since we were in contact by letter, I found myself rather preoccupied with trying to write a prose autobiographical work mainly inspired by trips and revisits that cohere around a theme, which I haven’t spoken about with you, but wish to explore in a literary form. It seems likely this project will take up a few more weeks, at the very least. I would like to see if I can convert the material into a play, but I’m more than happy to take some time out to contact you about my poem, Parnassus to New York, submitted for, Eternal Snow. The connections with you and the editors of the anthology are all very welcome as a way to counteract the solitude that can accompany creativity, and also because of the inspiration to be found in reading the other poets’ works.

You recently expressed an interest in a hearing more about the emergence of the poem Parnassus to New York. Here then is a rough outline of how it evolved and some of the inspiration behind the piece.

At first I had no thought in mind whatsoever about writing poetry connected with the Parnassus Festival that summer, the place that we me, - You as the poet from Nepal, whilst I attended readings, lectures and a poetry workshop with Mimi Khalvati. I think that we had both been at the lecture by Jo Shapcott on Marianne Moore prior to our initial encounter outside the Queen Elizabeth Hall. I had spoken to her briefly after the lecture and then, as I walked towards the river, quite suddenly you were there and we began talking as though we already knew each other (although we had never before met).

The immediacy to our meeting that summer’s day, and the intensity of our exchanges the next afternoon, seemed almost elusive to transcription into words, and following such unprecedented or quite startling situations, I find quite often that I start use imagistic type writing to describe them as I feel freed then from more quotidian conceptual constraints. Our early experience of each other included, I feel, a rather extraordinary sense of something unexpected yet somehow inevitable.. The afternoon subsequent to our initial encounter, I felt quite apprehensive about reading and exchanging my poems, but as though a surrender of a kind was inevitable, as though in a sense, I had quite literally no choice but to cede to some kind of a rescue, as though retrieved from the riverbank like something that had been found. Later, I came up with the word ‘feral’ to connote a range of connected meanings, and also a hint to some kind of damage or neglect at some stage of my life that I’ve been writing about quite recently, in connection with certain trips and revisits to places evoking a memory trace of that time.

The sense of surrender, I recall that I passed through that day resonated with religious experience to a degree. Yet was far more unique and individual and all the more valuable to me – a transcendence we created for ourselves instead of set up in advance by a shared culture of formal liturgical expression. I wonder at times if there was in fact a shamanic aspect to this encounter,  although I cannot be sure. I would like to ask you more about Shamanism in your culture and how it connects up with poetry. Imagery connected with mountain landscape later emerged in the poem partly to convey an exulted sense of imaginative height.

That meeting came to an end and we parted ways and did not meet again for quite a few months. Encouraged by attention to my writing, from you and other poets around this time --- both George Szrites, who I value for his time and encouraging comments, and Josephine Dickinson who proof-read my poem Parnassus to New York, I secluded myself at home in Drury Lane for much of the time whilst you were home in Nepal following the July festival, both writing and editing rather committedly and completing several new poems in quite close succession. With the sense that you modelled a way of being as a poet, not purely as a reflector of self and ideas, rather as a conduit of education and literary connection, a more selfless and outgoing creative attitude began to emerge than I feel I had experienced. By the autumn of 2012, I had written quite a few stanzas about our initial meeting, and when you arrived back in England I found that you were reading at The Poetry Café during a brief stop-over on the way to America,so naturally I attended, happy to hear you perform for the first time in my life…

The day after your reading the morning coffee and conversation in Queen’s Park was a good way to get to know each other further and to read some more of your poetry and because I found that I wanted to spend as much time with you as I could that day it seemed a good idea to travel by cab together to Heathrow in time for your afternoon flight.

After you left for your plane, I remained a while in the Heathrow airport reflecting on our initial meeting and enjoying the suspended sense of somehow being in a portal in between London and other worlds. It was then really that the second stage of writing began at which point I still had no idea that I would write a relatively long poem, just the sense that I was capturing some thoughts as they arose, like an artist may keep a sketch book perhaps as they travel around. At times I forget the images and ideas that I have I my mind if I don’t write them down. I can access them for a limited time and then they retreat back into the depths of my mind and more often than not I cannot fully retrieve them or recall very little of the imagery that may briefly have arisen in connection with specific inspiration, or the cadence and flow may have altered if I have changed my emotional state… but by writing them down I create an authentic kind of a record that later I can work with later in a fuller aesthetic way. And although there could be both development and modifications the original drafts can guide quite profoundly the voice in which the poem is to emerge. So I took a few notes in a book that I happened to have with me at the time then travelled on the tube into central London charting down thoughts, not really looking ahead in any real way, just dwelling in the present and the recent past of our meeting that day.

Not really wanting to return straight home, perhaps because I wanted to continue in that bubble of creativity for a while longer before usual routines and environments impacted upon that intellectually fertile kind of a state, I walked for a while by the Thames. Here I recalled the day of our first encounter, and also considered my trajectory as a poet and the idea of exploring and charting a series of ideas in a poem that somehow moves philosophically from one kind of insight onto another, with the travels throughout that day gradually crystallizing to embody a series of philosophical perspectives.The initial imagery of escape, imagination and projection, moved onto a sense of oneness and interconnectedness and from this I then arrived at a sense of some kind of vocation as expressed in the final stanzas of Parnassus to New York arising in part from a semi-conscious layer and defiant to a purely logical explanation at the outset, but which I decided to respect as integral to the poem.

Looking briefly at possible influences upon my poem, having read The Upanishads, as well as some Buddhist writings whilst a student of Theology and Philosophy in London, this seam of inspiration fused somehow with my previous readings of the Romantic poets as well as the surrounding urban landscapes I looked upon that day, to create the response to my surroundings which soon emerged as the later stanzas of the poem. Friendship of course was a significant motivator for the poem and the sense that by focusing my thoughts as an expression to you that I could more eloquently express them than if the reader remained vague and unidentified in my mind. Nonetheless I had a sense that it could be read by a wider audience and did have this idea in my mind to a point as it was being written down.

The final stage of writing Parnassus to New York involved drawing the elements together and evolving the structure and shape of it, out of the rougher earlier drafts, a rather organic process, the content determining the form rather as a waterfall over rock leaves a decisive trace…

 As far as I remember I sent an early version of the poem to you around January 2013 and then completed it in autumn last year. There is more, far more, I could say about the poem and if I re-read it I could identify specific images and what they signify to me, butfor now, I feel that I should now refrain from offering further thoughts on the subject of my submitted poem as the work exists in its poetic form for a reason, because I cannot or do not wish to say it any other way.

Thanks to you, Kathleen Gallagher and the other editors on board, for reading and responding to the poem. Your encouragement and appreciation has helped me to overcome self-doubt which perhaps was sewn at a certain stage in my life and has been quite difficult for me to overcome. I would be happy for the work to reach a wider audience especially in the setting you envisage, a forum for poets who you have worked with or encountered in some way.

Looking forward to seeing the anthology as it emerges, knowing far less about the final outcome perhaps than the editors at this stage, I am in a state of comparative suspense and happy to be a part of this dynamic and exciting creative process.

Wishing you well for the remainder of your tour. 

And have happy spring!

All the very best,

Maria xx

Maria Heath is a London based writer and has performed her poetry regularly around London. Her writing has appeared in Tumbleweed Hotel and The Wolf, among others. Currently, she is working on her first novel. 

New Yuyu anthology Poem:To Bloom in Ashtabula by Kathleen D. Gallagher

New Yuyu Poem

To Bloom in Ashtabula

 Kathleen D Gallagher

Revisiting my hometown, Ashtabula, and

seeing it in a new light with Himalayan poet Yuyutsu Sharma.

(Thus, as I hosted Yuyutsu Sharma on his recent tour from Cleveland, Ohio’s Mac’s Backs, to Orrville, Ohio to The University of Akron/Wayne College, (where I teach English and was excited to introduce a real life traveling poet from high Himalayas to  my college students), to the International Poet’s Hall in Erie, Pa., I did not know that an impromptu trip to my hometown would prompt a rush of my own poetry dormant in my veins.  That I, too, would be inspired and that it would rush the spring of creativity in my life. 

Yuytusu felt instantly attached to my small hometown--Ashtabula, its harsh weather and beauteous lake, Erie, and winter snowy expanse flung him back to his own land of snow and harsh winters. He was later invited with warm welcome arms to join an online group called Growing Up in Ashtabula.  This triggered my headlong leap into my childhood that I had forgotten in the mad rush of life in various Midwestern cities, then marriage followed by my active life as an independent woman author and artist .  I began my quest to research my own past for my new book of poems centered on Ashtabula.

Here, I begin with peonies. )

To Bloom in Ashtabula

Grandpa called it bud-blast.

“Them Ashtabula peonies only got two eyes---

 supposed to have three.  Cold weather’ll kill ‘em.”

I had no idea our backyard flowers

stemmed from some epic where Zeus, saving Paean

from the wrath of Asclepius would become one:

A bright-eyed God of Healing.  

In those slumbering eyes

dozed the salvation of  a million warriors---

All I saw were the pesky king-size black ants

we plucked and placed in old mason jars,

struggling to save the dying buds from attack.

Oh Naïve child!  How could I know these blossoms

embodied healing Gods? 

If I had known that the peonies sweet nectar stem

captivated the ants who devoured

lushness without harm, in harmony of opposites---

I would have stopped grumbling.

I would have gathered pale pink and lavender bouquets,

setting vases on tables---dining and side and bedside,

sanctioning the ants to kiss the rainbow petals,

drinking from the wellspring  of my origin.

I would have become a Paean

stirring together concoctions from the roots;

curing all youthful distress.

But I lived under shade trees,

in undernourished foliage removed

before next season’s roots had a chance to set.  

Oh, peony!---Herb of the sun!

Why did I not flourish in your sky-eyed terrain?

How could I have not known my home’s soil

embodied such mythical magic,

holding secret incantations in teas and roots and petals:

formulas for the pain and blight all things.

I go to your garden now,

praying that it’s not too late,

desiring the language of flowers.

I run with bouquets to all pitch-black and loamy places

inside the scent of your endless lifespan

luring me in fearlessly

to your leaves, to your flower,  to your seed,

to the roots of my own late blossom.

March, 2014, Ashtabula

 Kathleen D. Gallagher is a distinguished senior lecturer of English at the University of Akron/Wayne College, an award winning writer (2007 Writer’s Digest Honorable Mention for a feature article entitled “Cutting Storm,” and a 2011 Honorable Mention for her essay “Flying Objects” in the 2011 Writer’s Digest competition). She is also a poet with works in journals such as South Coast Poetry Journal; Issue #15 (Honorable Mention for “Focal Point” judged by writer/poet James Dickey).  Gallagher has edited several books including: Footpaths to Ancient Campsites in Copley Township, Ohio: 2006 by Robert D. Haag, and Dialogue with A Christian Proselytizer by Todd Allan Gates, September 2010. She is a former NEOMFA creative writing student at Kent State University. Gallagher was a finalist in the First Grand Tournament event through Writing Knights Press which resulted in her first poetry chapbook, I See Things are Falling. She was nominated for a Pushcart prize in December 2012 through Writing Knights Press.

A Yuyu Anthology Poem, 'City Gardener' by Mindy Kronenberg!

City Gardener

for Seamus Heaney and Yuyutsu Sharma

My father never owned any land save

the home he and mother bought on Long Island—

a palace compared to our tiny apartment in Queens.

He grew up under the boughs of subway systems

and the ashen skylines of the City, but my father’s

heart sprouted with meadows and gardens, his spirit

airborne in the arias of birds. The poetry in my father’s soul

came out at night after we were asleep, scratched on pads

into love notes that burst a copse of trees flowered

and dangling fruit.  It was under the moon that he planted words

but by sun rise he lay down his pen,  boil water for his morning coffee,

kiss my mother’s dreaming face, and take to the road far from the greenery,

back to the greys and stone of his territory, the ledgers  and  invoices

bearing the tight black lines of his salesman’s scratch,

his pen tucked in a pocket until it shivered for the garden.

An award-winning and widely published poet, Mindy Kronenberg teaches writing and literature at SUNY, Empire State College, through Poets & Writers programs in the community, and through the schools for BOCES. Kronenberg is the editor of Book/Mark Quarterly Review and the author of Dismantling the Playground (Birnhamwood) and Images of America: Miller Place (Arcadia)

Poetry: Yuyutsu Sharma’s Himalayan Poems: An NYU Master's Class Response

Poetry: Yuyutsu Sharma’s Himalayan Poems

NOVEMBER 17, 2012 BY ROSEA07

http://bibliotherapy247.wordpress.com/2012/11/17/poetry-yuyutsu-sharmas-himalayan-poems/

For my current Intermediate Poetry Class, we are required to go to at least two poetry readings over the course of the semester. So, when I received an email that there remained only a few spots open for a reading and master class at NYU’s Creative Writing House, I signed up pretty quickly, mostly for the sake of completing my requirement for this class. The poet that was leading this master class was Yuyutsu Ram Das Sharma, a Nepalese poet who most recently authored “Milarepa’s Bones”.

I arrived quite early for the reading and found that I was one of two undergraduates in a small class dominated by Creative Writing MFA students. To be honest, I was eager for the reading to start and to finish so I could seek refuge in my bedcovers and Jane Austen’s Emma.

What I did not expect was to leave this event completely spiritually and creatively rejuvenated. Yuyu’s poetry, and even his lecture, spoke to me on a level that I didn’t actually know existed. To be honest, I had become rather creatively and spiritually disillusioned over the past few months. This reading, that I had treated with such nonchalance–i wanted only to get it over with–ended up being exactly what I needed in so many ways.

Yuyu writes about the earth, in particular the Himalayas. He writes of the staggering power of nature to bring us down to the ground, to destroy us, to inspire us to live, to heal us, to take everything away and give it back. The way he read his poems made them at once song-like and booming, reminiscent of the deep and drawn out syllable “Om” that created the universe

I was fully engaged for the length of his talk. The stories from Hindu mythology that he told us in between made me feel as if I was in my grandmother’s presence.

For me, this poetry reading was a spiritual experience. It made me realize that my relationship to poetry is, indeed, a highly spiritual one. I look for connections to the people around me, to the city around me, to the universe around me, when I read poetry.

One day, I would like to be able to convey, in my poetry, the kind of feeling and movement that Yuyu manages to convey in his booming yet lilting, universal and earthy poems.

Updated Submission Directions:  Eternal Snow: An Anthology of Poems Originating from Yuyu’s Works, Readings and Workshops.

Deadline: April 30, 2014

Limit your poems to no more than seven. Please include your email address or other contact information on the top right hand side of entry. Tell us how and why you were inspired to write your poem/s as it relates to an interaction with Yuyutsu whether it was at one of his readings, at one of his workshops, through his poetry, or in an acquaintance online (or in person) where you were introduced to him through his poetry. We also would love to hear from you in the comment box below, so that we might start a discussion on how a poet such as Yuyutsu inspires other works. Also, stay tuned for information on a new Facebook page where we can have dialogue about Yuyu's tours and his creative impact on other writers.  We look forward to reading your Yuyutsu inspired poetry today! Namaste!

http://yuyusharmainspiredpoems.blogspot.com

A Yuyu Anthology Poem by David Austell : The Judgement Of Innocents

I have a loved friend who tells me

his mother was the architect

of his soul.

When she died,

he slept on the very spot of her deathbed,

on the bare floor since he felt closer to her

during the first days before

she passed into deep heaven;

and he gave her ashes back to the earth

as water bitter as the Salt Sea poured out of his eyes

until he was dry as a bone.

His grief drove him into the wilderness

where he hoped some painted wild man or strange adept

would tell him something of the path she traveled,

and if he would see her again.

When he learned that Herod had killed

the children of David’s Bethlehem

and some of the mothers protecting them

(my niece and her first-born were there),

my friend said,

How could that fox have killed the poor mothers?

I said to him,

There are secret things

in the culture of animals that cannot

be explained.

When my mother died, I held her in my arms

            and closed her slackened mouth,

my heart dry

as baked

bones.

--from David Austell's  forthcoming book length poem, The Tin Man on the biblical Character, Joseph.

Poet Jen Pezzo after Yuyu Workshop...

Workshops like yours are so important. It's a way to network and connect on a professional level, but on an artistic or creative level it goes much deeper. You probably know this, but the people that you share your experiences with come away with something new in their hearts, not only new tools to enhance their writing, but an enlightenment to a different type of world...an experience only you can share. I think of poets as gardeners of communication and knowledge. You plant seeds and hopefully, one day you will be able to see what will grow from them. The majority of the world has forgotten the importance of poetry. There is an awakening happening though. We are on the cusp of it! Keep doing what you do as long as you enjoy it. You have a gift. As poets, we put mirrors up to the world, but we can change it too. In addition, therein lies magic. The poems that people share with you after your workshops are proof. It's very special…

--Jen Pezzo

Call for Yuyu Poems

Fellow poets and writers!   Deadline for Eternal Snow has been extended!  Please see the submission directions below and share this information with others! 

If you have had the pleasure of meeting or interacting with Yuyu or had the opportunity of attending this internationally renowned Himalayan Poet’s  workshops, you are herein invited to submit to the upcoming  anthology, tentatively named,  Eternal Snow: An Anthology of Poems Originating from Yuyu’s Works, Readings and Workshops.

The book will be edited by David Austell and Kathleen D. Gallagher.  

We are already reading amazing poems from the following poets

Tony Barnstone John Clark Tracie Morell Ravi Shankar Lori Ann Kusterbeck  Eileen O’Connor Chuck Joy  Lorraine Conlin  Kathleen D Gallagher  David Austell  Maria Heath  Christopher Wheeling Renay Sanders  Mindy Kronenberg Shawn Aveningo Bill Wolak Tim Kahl  T.M. Göttl  Steve Brightman  Jen Pezzo  Thomas Jenney  Agnes Marton Russ Green Katya Johanna  Shannon Kline Timothy Gager  Kymberly Avinasha Brown  Devin Wayne Davis Robin Metz Alex Symington  Erica Mapp Lorraine Bouchard & more work is pouring in…

Please submit your work for consideration to
 yuyuinspiredpoems@gmail.com

Submission Directions:

Deadline: June 30, 2014

Limit your poems to no more than seven.  Please include your email address or other contact information on the top right hand side of entry.  In the body of the email, tell us how and why you were inspired to write your poem/s as it relates to an interaction with Yuyutsu whether it was at one of his readings, at one of his workshops, through his poetry, in an acquaintance online (or in person) where you were introduced to him through his poetry.  Please submit your poetry in ONE attachment for ease of reading and collating.

We also would love to hear from you in the comment below, so that we might start a discussion on how a poet such as Yuyutsu inspires other works.

We look forward to reading your Yuyutsu inspired poetry today!    Namaste!

David B. Austell

David B. Austell is Assistant Vice President and Director of the Office of Global Services at New York University in New York City, where he is also an Associate Professor of International Education in the NYU Steinhardt School (adjunct). David has undergraduate and graduate degrees in English Literature from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where he also completed his Ph.D. in Higher Education focusing on International Education. In 1992, David was a Fulbright grantee in Japan and Korea. The love of poetry grows from deep roots, and in David’s case from his parents: his mother who sent poetry, sacred and secular, to him all through college with her letters, and his father who read Shakespeare and Coleridge to him as a child.

Kathleen D. Gallagher

Kathleen D. Gallagher is a distinguished senior lecturer of English at the University of Akron/Wayne College, an award winning writer (2007 Writer’s Digest Honorable Mention for a feature article entitled “Cutting Storm,” and a 2011 Honorable Mention for her essay “Flying Objects” in the 2011 Writer’s Digest competition). She is also a poet with works in journals such as South Coast Poetry Journal; Issue #15 (Honorable Mention for “Focal Point” judged by writer/poet James Dickey).  Gallagher has edited several books including: Footpaths to Ancient Campsites in Copley Township, Ohio: 2006 by Robert D. Haag, and Dialogue with A Christian Proselytizer by Todd Allan Gates, September 2010. She is a former NEOMFA creative writing student at Kent State University. Gallagher was a finalist in the First Grand Tournament event through Writing Knights Press which resulted in her first poetry chapbook, I See Things are Falling. She was nominated for a Pushcart prize in December 2012 through Writing Knights Press.


Editorial Staff:   

Jen Pezzo 

 Jen Pezzo is a poet and author of “Imaginary Conversations” published by the Poets Haven in 2012  and "Lucid Brightenings" to be published by Writing Knights Press in May of 2014.She has been published in several anthologies and online zines; is one of the of the Stark County Library's "How Sweet it Is Adult Poetry" contest winners in 2012; and was a finalist in the Writing Knights Grand Tournament of 2013. Jen received a Pushcart nomination in 2012 through Poet's Haven. In addition to her writing, she also runs and coordinates a monthly open mic called “Akron Night Murmurs” that showcases local poets and musicians. She is currently the feature performance poet with the band Serene II and a board member of the Barberton Gallery of Fine Art. 



Tracie Morell

Tracie Morell is the past managing Editor of Lake Effect: Journal of the Literary Arts, from 2001-2003, and prior to that she served as co-editor of non-fiction.  Her work has appeared in Anemone Sidecar, Menacing Hedge, B&Y Dog, Inclement, Foliate Oak Literary Magazine, Gravel, Aperion Review, among others. She received a nomination for the 2013 Pushcart Prize and Best of the Web. She was a finalist for the Erie County Poet Laureate in 2012.  Recently, her work has been translated to German.  She has a degree (honors with distinction) in English Literature from Pennsylvania State University.  Tracie lives in the snowy tundra of the Rust Belt where she promotes to create livelihoods for her fellow poets and spoken word artists.